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Unpopular Resistance

by Alison Ronan

This brief overview of opposition to the First World War in Manchester and Salford introduces some of the leading activists and explores the way in which membership of anti-war organisations overlapped. It looks at campaigns against the war and against conscription, the erosion of civil rights and the need for universal suffrage. Activists from socialist, suffrage, non-conformist and pacifist campaigns worked together for a just and negotiated peace and to stop war in the future. Their individual and collective stories reveal a complex and extensive anti-war network that stretched from Manchester and Salford across Britain. It is a largely forgotten story.